"Giving an Old Gag...", "Ski-Tastrophe", "Tall Tale", "Mark Lark"
The title "Giving an Old Gag New Tracks" somewhat suggests something more than the two decades we have here, though the title also shows how much it had permeated. And Is it even a gag?
Interviewed by Look magazine (15 December 1942), Addams was asked what were his two sweetest memories about his career. He answered: "1) Being bitten by a camel in Central Park. 2) The adoption of my ski cartoon by a Western asylum, to determine mental levels of patients."
Interesting enough, further speculation off of the supposed mental sanity test claims moves this into the troubles of such legends with contradictory dates -- note the interview there is marked 1942 predating this 1946 as origin theory.
This piece of folklore probably has its origin in something that was published in Time magazine in its issue of Oct. 7, 1946. It seems that a German magazine called Heute had reprinted the cartoon, but many of the literal-minded readers mistook it for a puzzle, which several set out to solve in letters to the editors. Among the confident answers were the following:
"The skier had obviously come downhill on one foot, reclimbed the hill and come down on the other."
"The skier had slipped one foot out of his ski boot as he approached the tree and slipped it back after the passed."
Two amputees skied downhill clinging to each other, parted as they came to the tree, and resumed mutual support thereafter."
Tom Moore threw out his answer. Though to be sure, if Archie were in the original he would see the answer. And Moore was never placed in an asylum.
